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The Chinese Wikipedia (traditional Chinese: 中文維基百科; simplified Chinese: 中文维基百科; pinyin: Zhōngwén Wéijī Bǎikē) is the written vernacular Chinese edition of Wikipedia. It was created on 11 May 2001.[1] It is one of multiple projects supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Key Information

The Chinese Wikipedia currently has 1,511,778 articles (the twelfth-largest Wikipedia), 3,894,805 registered users, and 16,833 active editors, of whom 66 have administrative privileges.

The Chinese Wikipedia has been blocked in mainland China since May 2015.[2] Nonetheless, the Chinese Wikipedia is still one of the top ten most active versions of Wikipedia by number of edits and number of editors, due to contributions from users from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Chinese diaspora. Readers from Taiwan and Hong Kong contribute most of the page views of the Chinese Wikipedia.[3]

Despite being censored in mainland China, and as VPNs are normally not allowed to edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia administrators from China have permitted IP block exemption for a select number of mainland users. Such users are recruited to change the editorial content on Wikipedia in support of China's viewpoint and/or to support the election of pro-Chinese government administrators on Wikipedia, with the aim of gaining control of Wikipedia as part of the Chinese Communist Party's coordinated efforts to push their preferred narrative on platforms that have respected worldwide credibility.[4][5] There has also been an exodus of volunteer editors leaving Baidu Baike, a domestic competitor beset by problems of self-censorship and commercialization, to join Chinese Wikipedia because the "contributors wanted the privilege of working on a higher-quality internet encyclopedia" that also "carries a great deal of international power".[4][6] Observers have suggested that such moves are not just due to patriotic mainlanders but a "larger structural coordinated strategy the government has to manipulate these platforms" beside Wikipedia, such as Twitter and Facebook.[6]

The resulting pro-Beijing Wikipedia community, the Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC), has clashed with Wikipedia editors from Taiwan and Hong Kong, not only over content disputes on Wikipedia articles, but also made death threats against their Wikimedian communities. In particular, the WMC has threatened to report Wikipedia editors to Hong Kong's national security police hotline over the disputed article "2019–2020 Hong Kong protests" characterized by edit warring.[7] The Foundation's investigation also found that "infiltrators had tried to promote "the aims of China, as interpreted through whatever filters they may bring to bear" and that the WMC had been involved in vote-stacking and manipulation of administrative elections.[8][9]

Due to such threats to volunteer safety, as well as the manipulation of administrative elections by Mainland editors, Wikimedia revoked access of seven editors and downgraded the privileges of 12 Mainland-based administrators on 16 September 2021 over "infiltration concerns."[8][9][10][11] The affair caused significant controversy on Chinese Wikipedia, and also drew critical commentary from Chinese media, where Wikipedia is rarely discussed.[11]

History

[edit]
Browsing the Chinese Wikipedia on an iPad

The Chinese Wikipedia was established along with twelve other Wikipedias in May 2001. At the beginning, however, the Chinese Wikipedia did not support Chinese characters and had no encyclopedic content.

In October 2002, the first Chinese-language page was written, the Main Page. A software update on 27 October 2002 allowed Chinese language input. The domain was set to be zh.wikipedia.org, with zh based on the ISO code for the Chinese language. On 17 November 2002, the user Mountain translated the computer science article into zh:计算机科学, thus creating its first real encyclopedic article.

In order to accommodate the orthographic differences between simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters (or orthodox Chinese), from 2002 to 2003, the Chinese Wikipedia community gradually decided to combine the two originally separate versions of the Chinese Wikipedia. The first running automatic conversion between the two orthographic representations started on 23 December 2004, with the MediaWiki 1.4 release. The needs from Hong Kong and Singapore were taken into account in the MediaWiki 1.4.2 release, which made the conversion table for zh-sg default to zh-cn, and zh-hk default to zh-tw.[12]

In its early days, most articles on the Chinese Wikipedia were translated from the English version. The first five sysops, or administrators, were promoted on 14 June 2003.

Wikipedia was first introduced by the mainland Chinese media in the newspaper China Computer Education on 20 October 2003, in the article, "I join to write an encyclopedia" (我也来写百科全书).[13] On 16 May 2004, Wikipedia was first reported by Taiwanese media in the newspaper China Times. Since then, many newspapers have published articles about the Chinese Wikipedia, and several sysops have been interviewed by journalists.

Ivan Zhai of the South China Morning Post wrote that the blocks from the mainland authorities in the 2000s stifled the growth of the Chinese Wikipedia, and that by 2013 there was a new generation of users originating from the Mainland who were taking efforts to make the Chinese Wikipedia grow. In 2024, there were 3.6 million registered users on the Chinese Wikipedia, and in July 2013 7,500 of these users were active, with most of them originating from Hong Kong and Taiwan.[14]

Naming

[edit]
Opening the Chinese Wikipedia main page with Mozilla Firefox on Ubuntu 20.04

The Chinese name of Wikipedia was decided on 21 October 2003, following a vote.[15] The name (Chinese: 維基百科; pinyin: Wéijī Bǎikē) means "Wiki Encyclopedia". The Chinese transcription of "Wiki" is composed of two characters: , whose ancient sense refers to 'ropes or webs connecting objects', and alludes to the 'Internet'; and , meaning the 'foundations of a building', or 'fundamental aspects of things in general'. The name can be interpreted as 'the encyclopedia that connects the fundamental knowledge of humanity'.

The most common Chinese translation for wiki technology is 維基; however, it can be 維客 (literally "dimension visitor" or similar) or 圍紀 (literally "circle/enclose period/record" or similar), which are also transcriptions of the word "wiki". As a result, the term 維基 has become associated exclusively with Wikimedia projects.[16]

The Chinese Wikipedia also has a sub header: 海納百川,有容乃大, which means, "The sea encompasses hundreds of rivers/all rivers will eventually flow into the sea; it has capacity i.e. is willing to accept all and is thus great." The sub header originated from the first half of a couplet composed by the Qing Dynasty official Lin Zexu.

Community

[edit]
Origin of viewers by country over time on the Chinese Wikipedia
Page view statistics as of July 2012

According to Wikimedia Statistics, in January 2021, the majority of viewers and editors on the Chinese Wikipedia were from Taiwan and Hong Kong.[17][18] Numerous viewers and users are from Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, United States and other countries with a high Chinese diaspora; but there are some viewers from China as well.

In April 2016, the project had 2,127 active editors who made at least five edits in that month.

The most discussed and debated topics on the Chinese Wikipedia are political issues in Chinese modern history. For example, the six most edited articles as of August 2007 were Taiwan, Chinese culture, China, Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, and Hong Kong, in that order. In contrast, issues such as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are much less contentious.[citation needed]

Wikipedians from China, Taiwan, and other regions have engaged in editing conflicts over political topics related to Cross-Straits relations.[19] Due to the censorship in mainland China, Chinese Wikipedia's audience comes primarily from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and the diasporas in Malaysia, the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Korea (including Koreans from China), totaling approximately 60 million people. Chinese Wikipedia has more than 9,100 active editors as of July 2021, and this number is increasing.[20]

Approximately half of Chinese Wikipedia's 610 million pageviews monthly come from Taiwan, with approximately 20% coming from Hong Kong, 8% from United States, 4% from Malaysia and the rest from Singapore, Macau, mainland China and the Chinese diaspora. In 2021, the monthly pageviews of Chinese Wikipedia underwent a spike in growth from around 380 million to 620 million pageviews in six months.

Administrators

[edit]

As of June 2019, there are 78 administrators, or sysops. They are all elected by Chinese Wikipedians. Most of them come from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. There are also a few who come from the United States, Singapore, and Japan.

Meetings

[edit]
2013 Winter-Break-Meetup, Dalian, Liaoning, China

The first Chinese Wikipedian meeting was held in Beijing on 25 July 2004. Since then, Chinese Wikipedians from different regions have held many gatherings in Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Shenyang, Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Currently,[when?] a regular meetup is held once every two weeks in Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong, and once every month in Tainan City, Taiwan. In July 2006, Taiwanese Wikipedians also held a "travelling meetup", travelling by train through four Taiwanese cities over a period of two days. In August 2006, Hong Kong hosted the first annual Chinese Wikimedia Conference.

Chinese Wikipedians advertise Wikipedia in different ways. Many of them use Weibo, a Chinese socializing website similar to Twitter. Several Chinese Wikipedians created the Wikipedia monthly magazine, or journal, called "The Wikipedians" in December 2012, which is currently[as of?] published once a month.

State persecution of volunteers

[edit]

Chinese Wikipedia volunteers who edit on topics considered controversial by the state authorities, such as about Hong Kong protests, can face harassment and persecution.[7][21][22][23]

Automatic conversion between traditional and simplified Chinese characters

[edit]

Original situation

[edit]

Originally, there were virtually two Chinese Wikipedias under the names of "zh" (or "zh-cn") and "zh-tw". Generally, users from regions that used traditional Chinese characters (such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau) wrote and edited articles using traditional Chinese characters whereas those from regions that used simplified Chinese characters (such as mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia) wrote using simplified Chinese characters. Many articles had two uncoordinated versions; for example, there was both a traditional (法國) and simplified (法国) article on France. Further exacerbating the problem were differences in vocabulary (particularly nouns) and writing systems between mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. For example, a pineapple is called 菠萝 in mainland China and 菠蘿 in Hong Kong and Macau, but 黄梨 in Singapore and Malaysia and 鳳梨 in Taiwan.

Solution

[edit]

To avoid this near-forking of the project, starting around January 2005, the Chinese Wikipedia began providing a server-side mechanism to automatically convert different characters and vocabulary items into the user's local ones, according to the user's preference settings, which may be set to one of two settings that convert the script only, or one of six settings that also take into account regional vocabulary differences:

Variant's name Chinese name ISO
Simplified 简体 zh-Hans
Traditional 繁體 zh-Hant
Simplified and using mainland Chinese terms 大陆简体 zh-CN
Traditional and using Taiwanese terms 臺灣正體 zh-TW
Simplified and using Singaporean (and until mid 2018, Malaysian) terms 新加坡简体 (马新简体 until mid 2018) zh-SG
Simplified and using Malaysian terms (added in mid 2018) 大马简体 zh-MY
Traditional and using Hong Kong (and until mid 2013, Macau) terms 香港繁體 (港澳繁體 until mid 2013) zh-HK
Traditional and using Macau terms (added in mid 2013) 澳門繁體 zh-MO
NB: the user can also choose to read each article in whichever script it is stored in, without conversion
For more information, see:
meta:automatic conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese.

Conversion is done through a set of character conversion tables[where?] that may be edited by administrators. To provide an alternative means to harmonize the characters when the server-side converters fail to work properly, a special template was created to manually convert characters and article titles in one specific page.

Furthermore, page title conversion is used for automatic page redirection. Those articles previously named in different characters or different translations have been merged, and can be reached by means of both traditional and simplified Chinese titles.

Differences with other versions of Wikipedia

[edit]

According to a survey conducted between April 2010 and March 2011, edits to the Chinese Wikipedia were 37.8% from Taiwan, 26.2% from Hong Kong, 17.7% from mainland China, 6.1% from United States, and 2.3% from Canada.[24]

Many editing controversies arise from current and historical political events in Chinese-speaking regions, such as the political status of Taiwan, the independence movement and autonomy movement of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, and issues of the Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang.[citation needed]

Wikipedia in other varieties of Chinese

[edit]
The countries and territories in which the Chinese Wikipedia is the most popular language version of Wikipedia are shown in light green.

The Chinese Wikipedia is based on written vernacular Chinese, the official Chinese written language in all Chinese-speaking regions, including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. This register is largely associated with the grammar and vocabulary of Standard Chinese, the official spoken language of mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore (but not exclusively of Hong Kong and Macau, which largely use Cantonese).

The varieties of Chinese are a diverse group encompassing many regional topolects, most of which are mutually unintelligible and often divided up into several larger dialect groups, such as Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min Nan (of which Taiwanese is a notable dialect), and Cantonese. In regions that speak non-Mandarin languages or regional Mandarin dialects, the Vernacular Chinese standard largely corresponding to Standard Chinese is nevertheless used exclusively as the Chinese written standard; this written standard differs sharply from the local dialects in vocabulary and grammar, and is often read in local pronunciation but preserving the vocabulary and grammar of Standard Chinese. After the founding of Wikipedia, many users of non-Mandarin Chinese varieties began to ask for the right to have Wikipedia editions in non-Mandarin varieties as well. However, they also met with significant opposition, based on the fact that Mandarin-based Vernacular Chinese is the only form used in scholarly or academic contexts. Some also proposed the implementation of an automatic conversion program similar to that between simplified and traditional Chinese; however, others pointed out that although conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese consists mainly of glyph and sometimes vocabulary substitutions, different regional varieties of Chinese differ so sharply in grammar, syntax, and semantics that it was unrealistic to implement an automatic conversion program.

Objections notwithstanding, it was determined that these Chinese varieties were sufficiently different from Standard Chinese and had a sufficiently large number of followers to justify the creation of six Wikipedias for different varieties.

Edition name WP code Variety Writing system
Cantonese Wikipedia zh-yue: Yue, using Cantonese (i.e. the Guangzhou/Hong Kong/Macau dialect) as its standard. Traditional and simplified
Minnan Wikipedia zh-min-nan: Southern Min, using Taiwanese as its standard. Latin (Pe̍h-ōe-jī) and traditional
Mindong Wikipedia cdo: Eastern Min, using Fuzhounese as its standard. Latin (Bàng-uâ-cê) and traditional[25]
Wu Wikipedia wuu: Wu, using the Shanghainese, Suzhounese and classical literary Wu as its standards. Simplified
Hakka Wikipedia hak: Hakka, using the Siyen dialect as its standard. Latin (Pha̍k-fa-sṳ) and traditional[26]
Gan Wikipedia gan: Gan, using the Nanchang dialect as its standard. Traditional and simplified

Finally, requests were also made, and granted, to create a Classical Chinese Wikipedia (zh-classical:), based on Classical Chinese, an archaic register of Chinese with grammar and vocabulary drawn from classical works and used in all official contexts until the early 20th century, when it was displaced by the Vernacular Chinese standard.

All of the above Wikipedias have sidestepped the traditional/simplified Chinese issue. The Wu Wikipedia uses simplified Chinese exclusively, and the Classical Chinese Wikipedia uses traditional Chinese exclusively (the Gan and Cantonese Wikipedias default to traditional, but have a conversion function similar to the Chinese Wikipedia). The Min Nan Wikipedia uses Pe̍h-ōe-jī. The Mindong Wikipedia and Hakka Wikipedias currently use Bàng-uâ-cê and Pha̍k-fa-sṳ respectively, which can be converted to traditional Chinese characters, thus avoiding the issue completely.

Eastern Min

[edit]
Favicon of Wikipedia Eastern Min Wikipedia
Type of site
Internet encyclopedia project
Available inFuzhou dialect
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
URLcdo.wikipedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedSeptember 30, 2006; 19 years ago (2006-09-30)

The Eastern Min Wikipedia (Foochow Romanized: Bànguâpedia[27]) is the Mindong Chinese edition of Wikipedia, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. The project was started on 30 September 2006.[28] The writing system used in the Mindong Wikipedia is Foochow Romanized, a romanized orthography based on the standard Fuzhou dialect that was introduced by Western missionaries in the 19th century, and Chinese characters although most articles are in Foochow.

The Eastern Min Wikipedia was originally written using only Fuzhou romanization characters. On 23 June 2013, influenced by the establishment of a Chinese character version of the Hakka Wikipedia, the Eastern Min Wikipedia began to set up a Chinese character homepage, and since then, Chinese character version entries have gradually appeared. This project is also the second project in the Chinese Wikipedia to use both the Latin alphabet and the Chinese character writing system.

As of the end of November 2014, there were a total of 1,496 entries in the East Min Wikipedia, with one administrator and one active editor (one who registered and edited more than five times a month), and ranked 202nd among all Wikipedia languages in terms of number of entries.[29]

Hakka

[edit]
Favicon of Wikipedia Hakka Wikipedia
Type of site
Internet encyclopedia project
Available inHakka
HeadquartersMiami, Florida
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
URLhak.wikipedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Launched27 May 2007; 18 years ago (2007-05-27)

The Hakka Wikipedia (Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Hak-kâ-ngî Wikipedia[30]) is the Hakka language version of Wikipedia. As of September 2025, it contains 10,366 articles and has 35,210 registered users, including 30 active contributors and 1 administrator.[28]

Areas where Hakka is spoken

The Hakka Wikipedia was originally written only in Pha̍k-fa-sṳ. For users who are not familiar with vernacular characters, a Hakka dictionary and a simple comparison table are provided on the homepage. The vernacular part is mainly based on the Sixian dialect of Taiwanese Hakka (i.e. the Roman pinyin of Taiwan Hakka). There are also many entries written in the vernacular of mainland Hakka, and even written in Hagfa Pinyim.

On 10 March 2015, the Hakka edition had 4,512 articles and 13,485 registered users,[31] making it the 155th language edition of Wikipedia by number of articles and the 161st by number of registered users among the 287 active language editions at the time.

Blocking of Wikipedia

[edit]

The People's Republic of China and internet service providers in mainland China have adopted a practice of blocking contentious Internet sites in mainland China,[32] and Wikimedia sites have been blocked at least three times in its history.

On 19 May 2015, Chinese Wikipedia was blocked again within mainland China.[33] Because all Wikipedias rely on HTTPS links, Chinese censors cannot see what page an individual is viewing; this also makes it more difficult to block a specific set of pages.[citation needed]

First block

[edit]

The first block lasted from 2 to 21 June 2004. It began when access to the Chinese Wikipedia from Beijing was blocked on the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

Possibly related to this, on 31 May an article from the IDG News Service was published,[34] discussing the Chinese Wikipedia's treatment of the protests. The Chinese Wikipedia also has articles related to Taiwan independence, written by contributors from Taiwan and elsewhere. A few days after the initial block of the Chinese Wikipedia, all Wikimedia Foundation sites were blocked in mainland China. In response to the blocks, two moderators prepared an appeal to lift the block and asked their regional internet service provider to submit it. All Wikimedia sites were unblocked between 17 and 21 June 2004. One month later, the first Chinese Wikipedian moderators' meeting was held in Beijing on 25 July 2004.

The first block had an effect on the vitality of the Chinese Wikipedia, which suffered sharp dips in various indicators, such as the number of new users, the number of new articles, and the number of edits. In some cases, it took anywhere from 6 to 12 months in order to regain the stats from May 2004. On the other hand, on today's site, some of the articles are put under protection which may last for a month or more without any actions.

Second block

[edit]

The second and less serious outage lasted between 23 and 27 September 2004. During this four-day period, access to Wikipedia was erratic or unavailable to some users in mainland China – this block was not comprehensive and some users in mainland China were never affected. The exact reason for the block is a mystery. Chinese Wikipedians once again prepared a written appeal to regional ISPs, but the block was lifted before the appeal was actually sent, for an unknown reason.

Third block and temporary unblocks

[edit]

The third block began on 19 October 2005, and there was no indication as to whether this block was temporary or permanent, or what the reasons or causes for this block were. According to the status page currently[when?] maintained on the Chinese Wikipedia, the Florida and Korea servers were blocked, whereas the Paris and Amsterdam servers were not. Dozens of editors from across mainland China reported that they could only access Wikipedia using proxy servers, although there were isolated reports that some users could access Wikipedia without using a proxy. Most Chinese people were not able to connect to the site at all.

During October and November 2006, it first appeared that the site was unblocked again. Many conflicting reports came from news outlets, bloggers, and Wikipedians, reporting a possible partial or full unblocking of Wikipedia. Some reports indicated a complete unblock; others suggested that some sensitive topics remained blocked, and yet others suggested that the Chinese Wikipedia was blocked whereas other-language versions were not. From 17 November onwards, the complete block was once again in place.

On 15 June 2007, China lifted the block for several articles, only to then block an increasing number of articles. On 30 August 2007, all blocks were lifted, but then a block was placed on Wikipedia for all languages on 31 August 2007.[32] As of 26 January 2008, all languages of Wikipedia were blocked,[32] and as of 2 April 2008, the block was lifted.[35]

By 5 April 2008, the Chinese Wikipedia became difficult to access from the Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou. Connections to the Chinese Wikipedia were completely blocked as of 6 April 2008. Any attempt to access the Chinese Wikipedia resulted in a 60-second ban on all Wikimedia websites. However, users were able to log on to the Chinese Wikipedia using https. All other languages were accessible, but politically sensitive searches such as Tibet were still blocked.

On 3 July 2008, the government lifted the ban on accessing the Chinese Wikipedia. However, some parts were still inaccessible. On 31 July 2008, the BBC reported that the Chinese Wikipedia had been unblocked that day in China; it had still been blocked the previous day. This came within the context of foreign journalists arriving in Beijing to report on the upcoming Olympic Games, and websites like the Chinese edition of the BBC were being unblocked following talks between the International Olympic Committee and the Games' Chinese organizers.[36]

Fourth block

[edit]

On 19 May 2015, both the encrypted and unencrypted Chinese-language versions of Wikipedia were blocked.[37]

Fifth block

[edit]

On 23 April 2019, all versions of Wikipedia were blocked in China.[38][39][40]

Controversy and criticism

[edit]

2010 administrator controversy

[edit]

In April 2010, Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported the large-scale censorship of contents about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and Hong Kong related contents in which an administrator named "Shizhao" ("百無一用是書生" a.k.a. "時昭") was involved.[41] The report also mentioned the failed recall of the administrator.[41]

In a follow-up, Ming Pao interviewed Shizhao, who stated that he was not a member of the 50 Cent Party.[42] He added that for controversial topics such as the 1989 protests, he should be a little more cautious.[42] Shizhao denied that he had attempted to delete an article about the Concert For Democracy in China, and stated that he merely questioned the notability of the concert by adding a template to the article.[42] However, he had started a vote to delete an article about a song criticizing the Hong Kong government (Chinese: 福佳始終有你; pinyin: Fú jiā shǐzhōng yǒu nǐ) in 2007, enraging many Hong Kong netizens.[42] Shizhao added that, at the time, he had already edited more than 50,000 times, deleting several articles including Manual for Librarians. He joked about the incident, saying, "some may consider that is a kind of hate to libraries and hence is not suitable for monitoring Wikipedia."[42]

Allegations of bias against the Chinese government

[edit]

Some Chinese officials and scholars have accused Chinese Wikipedia of having serious anti-Chinese government bias.[43] Chinese academics Li-hao Gan and Bin-Ting Weng published a paper titled "Opportunities And Challenges Of China's Foreign Communication in the Wikipedia",[44] in which they argue that "due to the influence by foreign media, Wikipedia entries have a large number of prejudiced words against the Chinese government".[45] Jie Ding, an official from the China International Publishing Group, also published an article stating that "there is a lack of systematic ordering and maintenance of contents about China's major political discourse on Wikipedia". He also urged Wikipedia to reflect the voices and views of the Chinese government in an objective way.[46] Lokman Tsui, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in an interview with the BBC that "there a lot of misunderstandings about China abroad".[47]

In October 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation's application to become an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was blocked by the government of China over the existence of a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate in Taiwan and accusation of "Anti-China false information".[48]

Enming Yan, a former administrator of the Chinese Wikipedia, said in an interview with the BBC that "You're removing pro-Beijing voices and so the balance is going to tilt towards anti-Beijing forces within Wikipedia." However, Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, notes that the principles of freedom of expression and neutrality apply globally to Wikipedia. Wales said "I have deep experience of talking to people all over the world, and the idea that people in China, for example, are so brainwashed that they can't see that neutrality is just false."[49]

State-sponsored editors/administrators

[edit]

Despite being censored in mainland China, and as VPNs are normally not allowed to edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia administrators from China have permitted IP block exemption for a select number of mainland users. Such users are recruited to change the editorial content on Wikipedia in support of China's viewpoint and/or to support the election of pro-Chinese government administrators on Wikipedia, with the aim of gaining control of Wikipedia.[4][5]

Academics suggested that "China urgently needs to encourage and train Chinese netizens to become Wikipedia platform opinion leaders and administrators ... [who] can adhere to socialist values and form some core editorial teams."[7][6] This is seen as part of the Chinese Communist Party's coordinated efforts to push their preferred narrative on platforms that have respected worldwide credibility, as Wikipedia's domestic equivalent in China, Baidu Baike, lacks credibility due to self-censorship and commercialization.[4][6] The resulting pro-Beijing Wikipedia community, known as the Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC), was never formally recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation, as they had not signed legal documents provided by the foundation agreeing to protect the anonymity of its members.[4]

Clashes with Taiwan and Hong Kong editors

[edit]

Editors from Wikimedians of Mainland China have clashed with Wikipedia editors from Taiwan, not only over Wikipedia's content, but also making death threats made against Taiwan's community of Wikipedians. One Taiwanese editor suggested that it was not just patriotic mainlanders, but a "larger structural coordinated strategy the government has to manipulate these platforms" beside Wikipedia, such as Twitter and Facebook.[6]

The Wikimedians of Mainland China has threatened to report Wikipedia editors to Hong Kong’s national security police hotline over the disputed article "2019–2020 Hong Kong protests" characterized by edit warring.[7] A Hong Kong-based editor, who remains anonymous because of fears of intimidation, noted that "Pro-Beijing people often remove content that is sympathetic to protests, such as tear gas being fired and images of barricades. They also add their own content". Acknowledging that "edit wars" happen on both sides, the anonymous editor stated that "Pro-democracy editors tend to add content to shift the balance or the tone of the article, but in my experience, the pro-Beijing editors are a lot more aggressive in churning out disinformation. It's now unfixable without external interference. Someone is trying to rewrite history."[49]

Bans on state-sponsored admins/editors

[edit]

At 16:13 GMT, 13 September 2021 (00:13, 14 September 2021 Beijing Time), the Wikimedia Foundation globally banned seven Wikipedia users and removed administrator privileges from twelve users that were part of Wikimedians of Mainland China. Maggie Dennis, the foundation’s vice present of community resilience and sustainability, said that there had been a yearlong investigation into "infiltration concerns" that threatened the "very foundations of Wikipedia". Dennis observed that the infiltrators had tried to promote "the aims of China, as interpreted through whatever filters they may bring to bear". The investigation had also found that an unrecognized group of Mainland China editors, with approximately three hundred members, had been involved in vote-stacking and manipulation of administrative elections.[5] Suggesting possible links to the Chinese Communist Party, Dennis said "We needed to act based on credible information that some members (not all) of that group [WMC] have harassed, intimidated, and threatened other members of our community, including in some cases physically harming others, in order to secure their own power and subvert the collaborative nature of our projects".[4][5]

After the Wikimedia Foundation took action against the WMC editors, the Taiwanese Wikipedia community noted that such an action was long overdue and released a statement saying “We need to rebuild an inclusive wiki that welcomes everyone from all places who wants to contribute to Chinese language Wikipedia in good faith...Many people have felt unsafe for years, so restoring a shared sense of comfort is likely to take some time”.[4]

Competitors

[edit]

On 20 April 2006, the online Chinese search engine company Baidu created Baidu Baike, an online encyclopedia that registered users can edit, pending administrator reviews. The content of the encyclopedia is self-censored in accordance with the regulations of the People's Republic of China government.[50]

Baidu Baike and Hudong are both commercial products. Whereas the Chinese Wikipedia is released under the GNU Free Documentation License, Baidu Baike and Hudong are fully copyrighted by their ownership; contributors forfeit all rights upon submission. Within weeks, the number of articles in Baidu Baike had surpassed that of the Chinese Wikipedia. As of October 2009, Hudong Wiki surpassed Baidu Baike as China's largest online encyclopedia in terms of number of articles it owns. Baidu Baike's growth is mainly due to "widespread copyright infringement" by mass-copying Wikipedia pages and incorporating them into Baidu Baike pages since 2007.[51][52]

Due to self-censorship and commercialization, Baidu Baike lacks credibility. Baidu Baike has been criticized as it "hawks opportunities for 'content collaboration' with celebrities" and monetarization. Baidu's "commercialization of misinformation" led to the death of student Wei Zexi in 2016, as Baidu search rankings promoted an experimental treatment recommended by a Baidu health care page in return for receiving payments, even though chemotherapy and surgery were more effective treatments for the disease. Most observers also found that Baidu Baike "publishes a lot of garbage...as Baidu Baike does not limit entries to notable topics or require that its information be supported by reliable sources". In recent years there has been an exodus of volunteer editors leaving Baidu Baike to join Chinese Wikipedia because the "contributors wanted the privilege of working on a higher-quality internet encyclopedia" that also "carries a great deal of international power".[4][6]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
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Chinese Wikipedia (中文維基百科 / 中文维基百科) is the Chinese-language edition of the collaborative, free-content , which began accepting contributions on 11 May 2001 and supports content in both simplified and traditional Chinese scripts via language variants. As of 2025, it contains over 1.5 million articles, positioning it as the twelfth-largest Wikipedia edition by article count and serving primarily users in , , and communities due to its inaccessibility in . The project has grown through volunteer editors addressing topics in Chinese history, , and , achieving milestones such as reaching 1 million articles in 2012, though its development lags behind in depth and neutrality on politically sensitive subjects. Unlike the English edition, Chinese Wikipedia often presents historical narratives aligned with mainland Chinese perspectives, such as on modern events like the or Taiwan's status, reflecting influences from its editor demographics and occasional coordinated editing campaigns. Since 2019, all versions of Wikipedia, including Chinese, have been fully blocked in by the Great Firewall, exacerbating reliance on VPNs for access and prompting concerns over state-driven disruptions like pro-Beijing "infiltration" efforts documented by the , which led to bans on certain editors in 2021. These issues highlight tensions between the platform's open-editing model and geopolitical pressures, with Chinese authorities alternatively promoting state-controlled alternatives like for domestic use.

History

Establishment and Initial Development

The Chinese Wikipedia, the edition of the in , was established on May 11, 2001, shortly after the launch of the , as part of the Wikimedia Foundation's early expansion to multiple languages. This creation aligned with the project's goal of providing a collaborative, freely editable accessible to Chinese-speaking users globally, including those in , , , and overseas communities. Initial setup included support for both simplified and traditional Chinese characters, reflecting the linguistic divisions among users, though automated conversion tools were later refined to facilitate . Despite its establishment, the Chinese Wikipedia saw minimal activity in its first year, with no substantive content created until October 2002, when the first Chinese-language page appeared. This delay stemmed from technical hurdles, such as Chinese input methods and script encoding, combined with lower internet adoption rates in Chinese-speaking regions compared to English-dominant areas—mainland China's online population was under 50 million in 2002, limiting potential contributors. On November 17, 2002, an early milestone occurred with the translation of the English Wikipedia's article on into Chinese, demonstrating the project's reliance on cross-lingual to build initial content. Early development emphasized community-driven expansion, but progress remained modest, with article counts in the dozens by late 2003. Contributors, primarily from and due to better infrastructure and fewer restrictions, focused on translating high-value topics like science and technology. The absence of systematic at this nascent stage allowed unfiltered content creation, though sporadic blocks in began emerging by mid-decade, foreshadowing access challenges. This period laid the groundwork for variant-specific interfaces, enabling users to view pages in their preferred script without altering underlying text.

Growth and Milestones

The Chinese Wikipedia edition was established on May 11, 2001, as part of the initial launch of multiple language versions by the Wikimedia Foundation. Initial development proceeded slowly, with the first substantive article—a translation of the English Wikipedia entry on computer science—created on November 17, 2002, following preliminary pages in October of that year; this delay stemmed from technical challenges in rendering Chinese characters and limited early participation amid linguistic complexities across variants like Simplified and Traditional scripts. Subsequent growth accelerated through volunteer contributions, particularly from users in , , and communities, enabling the project to overcome early hurdles. By 2008, it had reached 200,000 articles on July 31. This milestone was followed by 300,000 articles on March 28, 2010, reflecting steady expansion despite periodic access restrictions in .
DateMilestone
July 31, 2008200,000 articles
March 28, 2010300,000 articles
February 8, 2012400,000 articles
Further progress included surpassing 715,000 articles by August 2013, positioning it as the 12th largest edition at the time. The edition crossed the 1 million article threshold on April 13, 2018, becoming the 14th to achieve this, amid ongoing community efforts to maintain neutrality on politically sensitive topics. By October 2025, it hosted over 1.5 million articles, supported by approximately 17,000 active editors, though growth rates have moderated compared to earlier decades due to maturing content depth and external pressures like .

Evolution Amid Political Pressures

Access to the Chinese Wikipedia in mainland China has been subject to intermittent blocks by the government since June 2004, often timed with politically sensitive anniversaries such as that of the protests. These restrictions escalated in 2006 when, following a partial lifting of the ban, access remained barred to articles on topics like high-level politics and the 1989 events, compelling users to navigate censored mirrors or proxies. Similar blocks recurred ahead of the 2013 Tiananmen anniversary, targeting uncensored versions of the site. The adoption of encryption by in rendered selective article-level blocking technically challenging, prompting a continuous ban on the Chinese-language edition in from May of that year onward. This escalated further in April 2019, when the restriction expanded to all versions, severing direct access for an estimated hundreds of millions of potential mainland contributors without VPN circumvention. Such measures have reduced mainland editing activity, as users face legal risks under China's cybersecurity laws for bypassing firewalls, thereby shifting community dynamics toward overseas participants, particularly from and . Political pressures have also manifested in content disputes, with edit wars intensifying over sensitive issues like the 2019 Hong Kong protests, where revisions devolved into clashes over sovereignty and autonomy narratives. Taiwanese editors have accused mainland-affiliated accounts of coordinated alterations to articles on Taiwan's political status, prompting investigations into state-linked influence campaigns. In 2021, the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee banned several long-term Chinese Wikipedia administrators for undisclosed paid editing and advancing narratives aligned with official Chinese positions, highlighting suspected proxy interference despite the site's global hosting. These dynamics have driven an evolution toward heightened and verification protocols within the Chinese Wikipedia , including stricter conflict-of-interest disclosures, while article coverage on restricted topics like historical suppressions often features contested, pro-government framings amid deletion debates. The persistent blocks and external meddling have constrained exploratory editing from , fostering a project where growth in non-political domains contrasts with omissions or biases in areas under state scrutiny.

Technical Aspects

Naming Conventions

Naming conventions in Chinese Wikipedia prioritize article titles that are concise, neutral, and aligned with the most common usage in Chinese-language contexts, drawing from reliable sources to ensure recognizability and precision. Titles consist of sequences of Chinese characters without spaces or punctuation between words, reflecting the orthographic norms of the language, while avoiding overly complex full forms in favor of familiar abbreviations when the latter are broadly accepted and reduce redundancy—for instance, preferring shorter, established designations over verbose official titles unless the latter provide essential disambiguation. Transliterations of foreign names and terms adhere to prevalent conventions in Chinese media and official translations, such as standard renderings for political figures (e.g., "Kevin Michael Rudd" transliterated consistently), to maintain consistency across entries. For topics prone to , especially homonyms, parenthetical qualifiers are appended to titles, though the primary emphasis remains on selecting the naturally precise term that minimizes the need for such additions. Disputes over naming, often arising in politically sensitive areas like territorial designations (e.g., competing claims for names), are resolved through community-driven processes including discussions, third-party opinions, and voting mechanisms, with a default deference to the earliest established title unless it contravenes neutrality or common usage principles. This self-organizing approach fosters consensus but can perpetuate initial biases if early editors dominate without broader input. Administrators may intervene in protracted conflicts via noticeboards, underscoring the role of collective deliberation in upholding factual integrity over individual preferences.

Automatic Character Conversion

The Language Converter system in enables Chinese Wikipedia to display content in multiple Chinese script variants, including simplified Chinese (used primarily in ) and traditional Chinese (used in , , and ), by automatically transforming characters and select terms on the client side based on user preferences. This feature, integrated since MediaWiki version 1.4 around 2004, stores article text in a source form—often a mix of scripts—and applies conversion rules during rendering, supporting variants such as zh-hans (simplified), zh-hant (traditional), zh-hant-tw ( traditional), and zh-hant-hk ( traditional). Users select their preferred variant via a dropdown menu in the interface, triggering real-time conversion without altering the underlying markup. Conversion relies on predefined tables mapping over 20,000 character pairs between simplified and traditional forms, derived from data, open-source tables like SCIM, and community-maintained rules for handling ambiguities such as homographs or regional terminology differences (e.g., "面包" in simplified converting to "麵包" in traditional, with adjustments for Hong Kong-specific usages). Editors employ special markup syntax, such as -{simplified|traditional}- or conversion-disabling braces like -{}-, to specify exact behavior for problematic terms, preventing unintended shifts in meaning or proper nouns. This bidirectional process supports editing in one variant while viewing in another, though it requires communal adherence to guidelines to avoid hybrid text accumulation from cross-variant edits. Despite its efficiency in unifying content for diverse Chinese-speaking audiences—estimated at over 1.3 billion potential users—the system faces limitations, including incomplete mappings for rare characters or neologisms, which may result in unconverted glyphs or errors unless manually tagged. Ongoing refinements, such as implementations for faster processing, aim to enhance accuracy for sub-variants, but reliance on rule-based tables rather than means occasional discrepancies persist, particularly in historical or dialectical contexts. As of 2024, the converter remains a core technical enabler for Chinese Wikipedia's single-edition model, distinguishing it from languages requiring separate projects.

Script Variants and Localization

The Chinese Wikipedia utilizes MediaWiki's language converter extension to manage script variants, primarily distinguishing between Simplified Chinese (zh-hans) and Traditional Chinese (zh-hant). This system enables automatic transformation of characters and select terms during display, allowing articles edited in one variant to adapt to user preferences without separate versions for each script. The conversion process relies on predefined mappings for over 2,000 characters and word-level substitutions, implemented since 1.5 in 2005. Sub-variants further refine this for regional localization, accounting for terminological divergences shaped by historical, political, and cultural factors across Chinese-speaking areas. These include zh-cn for (Simplified script with PRC-specific lexicon), zh-sg for and zh-my for (Simplified with local adaptations), zh-tw for (Traditional script with Republic of China terminology), zh-hk for , and zh-mo for (both Traditional with British colonial influences). For example, the English "computer" converts to "计算机" (jìsuànjī) in zh-cn but "電腦" (diànnǎo) in zh-tw, reflecting entrenched regional usages.
Variant CodeScriptPrimary Regions/Adaptations
zh-hansSimplifiedGeneral; base for zh-cn, zh-sg, zh-my
zh-hantTraditionalGeneral; base for zh-tw, zh-hk, zh-mo
zh-cnSimplified; PRC political/economic terms
zh-twTraditional; ROC governance and cultural lexicon
zh-hkTraditional; British-era and Cantonese influences
zh-sgSimplified; multicultural Southeast Asian context
zh-moTraditional; Portuguese colonial remnants
zh-mySimplified; diaspora and Malay-influenced terms
Localization via these variants promotes but introduces challenges, as conversions may fail for ambiguous characters, neologisms, or context-dependent phrases, necessitating manual overrides with syntax like {{zh|variant|text}}. Editors often debate variant neutrality, particularly on topics involving cross-strait relations, where terminology choices can imply ideological alignment—such as preferring "Taiwan Province" (zh-cn) versus "Taiwan" (zh-tw)—prompting community guidelines for balanced sourcing.

Community Dynamics

Editor Demographics and Administrators

The editor community of Chinese Wikipedia is primarily composed of contributors from , , and diaspora Chinese populations, as direct access from requires circumvention of government blocks on the site. This geographic distribution stems from persistent censorship in the , where has been intermittently or fully blocked since 2019, limiting open participation from the mainland without tools like VPNs, which carry legal risks. In 2019, approximately 100 active editors operated from alone, often engaging in disputes over politically sensitive topics like the city's protests. Surveys of active editors reveal elevated sensitivities to external pressures: in 2024, 41% of Chinese-language Wikipedia contributors reported local laws or rules that deterred participation, far exceeding rates in other editions, while 49% experienced feelings of unsafety or discomfort in contributing over the prior year. Comparable 2023 data showed 47% hesitation due to such regulations. These figures reflect the causal impact of authoritarian oversight, particularly for potential mainland participants, though quantitative breakdowns by location remain sparse beyond Wikimedia's internal aggregates. Gender and age specifics for this edition are undocumented in available surveys, but align with broader Wikimedia patterns of dominance (around 87% globally) and skew toward younger adults. Administrators, who handle tasks like and content protection, are elected via community Requests for Adminship processes requiring demonstrated experience and broad support, consistent with Wikimedia policies. In July , the edition had 76 administrators, distributed as 17 from , 20 from , and 38 linked to , highlighting tensions over influence. That September, the Wikimedia Foundation revoked rights from four of the top ten most active administrators and banned seven mainland-based power users after investigations uncovered coordinated efforts to skew content toward state-aligned narratives, such as promoting Chinese nationalist views on and . These interventions, described as unprecedented, created administrative backlogs but aimed to preserve amid evidence of exploitation by organized groups. Subsequent numbers have not been publicly detailed, though the community continues to prioritize vetted, neutral custodians to counter persistent infiltration risks.

Organizational Activities and Meetings

The Chinese Wikipedia community organizes activities primarily through regional affiliates like Wikimedia Taiwan, which coordinates regular s for editors since 2006. These events, held in and extending to , , and , enable in-person collaboration on article development, policy discussions, and skill-sharing sessions. Monthly gatherings in , for example, allow participants to address community operations and project-specific challenges. International participation occurs via , the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, where Chinese-language editors engage in global dialogues on free knowledge initiatives. hosted Wikimania 2013, attracting contributors from across , though mainland involvement remained limited by internet censorship. Subsequent events, such as Wikimania 2023 in Singapore, continued to feature sessions relevant to multilingual Wikipedia editions, with hybrid formats accommodating dispersed communities. In , organizational efforts have been constrained by access blocks since 2015 and heightened scrutiny. Early offline meetups, including the 2013 Dalian winter vacation gathering, facilitated direct editor interactions for editing workshops and networking. User groups such as Wikimedians of shifted toward online activities post-2021 Wikimedia Foundation bans on accounts linked to coordinated editing attempts, emphasizing virtual promotion of Wikimedia principles amid regulatory pressures. Ad hoc meetings address pressing issues, exemplified by the December 3, 2022, open forum organized by Wikimedia Taiwan, which examined Foundation interventions on Chinese Wikipedia contributors and their implications for community trust. These gatherings underscore the community's adaptation to geopolitical barriers, relying on networks and digital tools for sustained coordination.

Persecution and Intimidation of Contributors

In July 2021, a Wikipedia editor using the username "Walter Grassroot" threatened in a QQ chat group for Wikimedians in to report -based contributors to 's hotline, citing their edits on politically sensitive topics. This incident, documented via screenshots shared among editors, prompted the Wikimedia Community User Group to convene an emergency meeting and issue anti-doxxing guidelines, emphasizing the risks of exposure under the 2020 National Security Law, which imposes penalties up to for offenses like or with foreign forces. While no prosecutions directly stemming from this threat have been confirmed, it underscored broader apprehensions among editors that mainland peers could leverage edit histories or off-wiki communications to facilitate authorities' identification and targeting. These fears were compounded by patterns of intra-community harassment, where pro-Beijing editors systematically bullied, doxxed, and threatened pro-democracy counterparts over articles related to protests, independence, and Chinese issues. In response, the conducted an investigation and, on September 13, 2021, imposed global bans on seven accounts associated with for "unprecedented abuses," including coordination to enforce biased content, real-life threats, and physical assaults on other volunteers; it also stripped administrative privileges from twelve additional accounts. One implicated editor, known as Techyan, had his presentation canceled in July 2021 amid allegations of similar infiltration tactics. Such actions represented the Foundation's rare "office intervention," justified by evidence of off-wiki collusion via platforms like QQ and to suppress dissenting edits. The absence of documented arrests specifically for Wikipedia contributions in China or Hong Kong reflects the platform's blocked status in since 2015—requiring VPN access that itself invites surveillance—but does not mitigate the on contributors. Editors in high-risk regions have increasingly relied on , pseudonyms, and segregated user groups to mitigate doxxing risks, with Hong Kong's Wikimedia chapter advising against linking real identities to edit histories post-2020. This dynamic illustrates how state-aligned actors within the community exploit 's open structure to intimidate, fostering among those documenting events contrary to Beijing's narratives.

Comparative Analysis

Differences from English and Other Wikipedias

The Chinese Wikipedia maintains core editorial policies akin to those of the English edition, such as neutral point of view and verifiability through reliable sources, but their application diverges due to linguistic, cultural, and demographic factors. Unlike the English Wikipedia, which draws from a vast pool of global editors and predominantly Western-language sources, the Chinese edition relies heavily on Chinese-language materials, including state-affiliated media, which editors rate as less reliable overall—only 23% of cited news agencies, websites, and blogs are deemed generally reliable compared to higher trust levels in English articles. This sourcing pattern can lead to variations in coverage depth for non-Chinese topics and heightened scrutiny for politically sensitive Chinese events, where edit conflicts often arise from competing regional influences rather than the broader international consensus seen in English discussions. A distinctive technical adaptation in the Chinese Wikipedia is its automatic script variant converter, which dynamically transforms text between simplified and traditional Chinese characters (and other variants like for Japanese compatibility) based on user preferences, enabling seamless display without duplicating content. This feature addresses the inherent in Chinese writing systems—simplified characters promoted in versus traditional ones prevalent in and —contrasting sharply with the English Wikipedia's uniform , which requires no such conversion and thus lacks equivalent localization tools. The converter relies on editable conversion tables and context-dependent rules to handle ambiguities, such as characters with multiple mappings, fostering a unified article namespace amid script diversity that other monolingual editions, like German or French, do not encounter. In terms of scale and community dynamics, the Chinese Wikipedia lags behind the English edition, hosting around 1.3 million articles as of recent counts versus over 7 million in English, with correspondingly lower edit volumes and active users attributable to its smaller, regionally concentrated editor base primarily from and rather than the English Wikipedia's global, multilingual contributors. This demographic skew influences content perspectives; for instance, articles on events like the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests exhibit tonal differences, with the Chinese version historically diverging toward narratives echoing official restraints or reflecting intra-community clashes, such as attempts to reframe the incident as a "counter-revolutionary riot" amid Taiwan-mainland edit disputes, unlike the more uniformly critical framing in English informed by declassified Western archives. Such variances underscore how editor origins shape neutrality enforcement, with Chinese discussions often prioritizing local sourcing over the English edition's emphasis on diverse, peer-reviewed international references, potentially amplifying biases from underrepresented mainland viewpoints due to access blocks.

Specialized Chinese-Language Editions

The specialized Chinese-language editions of Wikipedia encompass distinct projects for various Sinitic languages beyond Modern Standard Chinese, including Yue (Cantonese), (Southern Min), Hakka, Wu, Gan, Eastern Min (Min Dong), and others, functioning as parallel encyclopedias to document knowledge in these vernaculars. These editions support linguistic preservation amid the dominance of Mandarin, where dialects face erosion from policies, with volunteer editors—often amateurs—translating and creating content to maintain cultural and lexical specificity. Eight such versions exist, covering Mandarin alongside , Eastern Min, Wu, Gan, Hakka, (), and , each addressing unique phonological, lexical, and syntactic features not fully captured in the standard edition. Orthographic approaches vary: and Gan editions primarily employ Han characters supplemented by phonetic systems like , while Min Nan, Hakka, and Min Dong rely on (e.g., for Min Nan) for article text to better represent spoken forms lacking standardized writing. This divergence reflects broader challenges in Sinitic language documentation, where debates and script reform pressures limit growth, yet enable niche content on , , and terminology absent from Mandarin-centric sources. As of September 2025, Sinitic-language Wikipedias collectively contain 2,439,516 articles, with the main Chinese edition comprising 69.046% and Min Nan at 19.875%, underscoring disproportionate activity in specialized editions relative to their speaker bases (e.g., Min Nan's ~50 million speakers vs. Mandarin's billions). Smaller editions like Hakka and Wu lag with fewer contributors and articles, often under 20,000 each, constrained by diaspora fragmentation and competition from mainstream platforms, though they host targeted entries on regional identities and oral traditions. These projects' modest scale highlights their role as archival tools rather than mass-access resources, prioritizing empirical documentation over broad appeal in an era of Mandarin homogenization.

Scale and Metrics

Article Counts and User Activity

The Chinese Wikipedia maintains approximately 1,507,000 articles as of late 2025, positioning it as one of the larger non-English editions despite slower growth compared to counterparts like the 's over 7 million articles. This count reflects incremental expansion since reaching the 1.5 million milestone in early 2023, with total pages exceeding 11 million including drafts and redirects. Cumulative edits stand at over 89 million, indicating sustained but modest editorial effort. User engagement metrics reveal around 3.87 million registered accounts, though monthly active editors number roughly 17,000—defined as those making at least one edit in the prior 30 days—with only 66 administrators overseeing operations. This represents a fraction of the activity on unrestricted Wikipedias, attributable in part to mainland China's ongoing blocks since , which limit participation from the world's largest potential contributor base. Page views, while substantial in regions like and , show concentrated usage outside the People's Republic, with global traffic patterns underscoring accessibility barriers.
MetricValue (as of late 2025)
Articles1,507,251
Registered Users3,867,352
Monthly Active Editors16,971
Total Edits89,374,754
Administrators66
These figures highlight a community sustained primarily by overseas Chinese speakers and diaspora contributors, with edit volumes trailing those of Wikipedias in less censored environments by orders of magnitude. Depth metrics, averaging 215 words per article, suggest coverage breadth over exhaustive detail in many entries.

Content Depth and Quality Indicators

The Chinese Wikipedia assesses article quality through a tiered classification system, including stubs (brief outlines), start-class (basic information), C-class (developed but incomplete), B-class (substantial coverage with minor gaps), good articles (well-written and verified), and featured articles (comprehensive, neutral, and rigorously sourced exemplars). Featured articles undergo to ensure adherence to criteria such as verifiability via multiple independent sources, stability against edit wars, and broad factual coverage without original . As of 2025, the edition maintains 1,040 featured articles, equating to roughly 0.07% of its total article corpus. This ratio lags slightly behind the English Wikipedia's 0.11% featured article proportion, signaling a narrower base of top-tier content amid 1.5 million total entries. Good articles, a intermediary quality level requiring solid structure and reliable citations but not the exhaustive depth of featured status, bolster mid-tier indicators, though aggregate counts remain underreported in centralized Wikimedia metrics. Editing depth—calculated as total revisions divided by article count—serves as a proxy for collaborative intensity and content maturation; for the Chinese edition, this yields a moderate value reflective of sustained but uneven editor involvement, lower than top editions like English or German due to factors including access barriers and demographic constraints on active contributors. Machine learning-based quality predictors, trained on revision histories and structural features, assign Chinese articles median scores that have trended downward in longitudinal analyses, correlating with slower improvement in underrepresented domains. Source verifiability underscores quality variances: empirical audits reveal only 23% of cited news outlets, websites, and blogs deemed reliable by community standards, versus higher rates in English, attributable to overreliance on domestic media prone to state influence and limited access to global archives. Reference density averages lower than in Western-language editions, with studies of top-cited articles showing Chinese entries incorporating fewer scholarly citations per unit length, partly from linguistic concision and sourcing hurdles. Decision-tree models tailored to Chinese text detect quality via features like hyperlink density and revision stability, achieving high accuracy in flagging stubs but highlighting persistent issues in neutrality for geopolitically charged topics. Overall, these metrics indicate robust scale in neutral domains like science and culture, yet systemic gaps in depth and sourcing fidelity, exacerbated by editor self-selection toward less contentious areas.

Censorship and Accessibility

Chronology of Blocks in Mainland China

Access to in has been subject to intermittent blocks by the since 2004, typically justified by the presence of content deemed politically sensitive, such as articles on the 1989 protests. These restrictions align with broader censorship policies enforced via the Great Firewall, which prioritize control over information flow. Early blocks targeted the Chinese-language edition selectively, while later ones encompassed all versions after technical changes like adoption complicated keyword-level filtering. The first major block occurred on June 3, 2004, affecting the Chinese Wikipedia shortly before the 15th anniversary of the events, rendering the site inaccessible without circumvention tools. This restriction persisted for over a year, with users reporting consistent DNS-based blocking across major ISPs. Partial unblocking followed in November 2006, allowing general access but retaining filters that prevented loading of specific pages related to topics like or . Such intermittent disruptions continued through 2008, often coinciding with politically charged dates, though full-site blocks were not permanent during this period. A more enduring restriction took effect in June 2015, when the Chinese Wikipedia was indefinitely blocked following the site's transition to HTTPS encryption, which rendered granular content censorship infeasible without domain-level intervention. Non-Chinese editions remained intermittently accessible until April 2019, when DNS poisoning and IP blocking extended the prohibition to all language versions, including English and others, affecting the entire wikipedia.org domain. This comprehensive ban, confirmed by network tests showing zero connectivity from major providers like China Telecom, has persisted without official reversal. As of October 2025, the full block on all Wikipedia editions continues in , with no reported lifts despite occasional discussions of domestic alternatives; users rely on VPNs or proxies for access, though these face increasing scrutiny. The policy reflects a strategic preference for total exclusion over filtered access, as evidenced by the absence of unblocking announcements from or regulators since 2019.

Mechanisms and Rationales for Restrictions

The Chinese government enforces restrictions on access to Chinese Wikipedia via the Great Firewall (GFW), a nationwide system that intercepts and filters originating from . Key mechanisms include blocking the IP addresses associated with Wikipedia's servers, which prevents direct connections to the site's domains such as zh.wikipedia.org, and DNS cache poisoning, where manipulated domain name system responses redirect users to non-functional pages or error states instead of the legitimate servers. Additionally, analyzes inbound and outbound data packets for keywords or patterns linked to blocked content, enabling the GFW to reset connections mid-stream if prohibited material is detected, while URL filtering targets specific paths within Wikipedia that reference sensitive topics. These techniques have been applied intermittently since 2004 but became more comprehensive after Wikipedia's adoption of encryption in 2015, which rendered granular, page-level blocking technically challenging without risking overbroad disruptions; as a result, authorities escalated to domain-wide prohibitions, extending the full blockade to all language versions by May 2019. Efforts to circumvent these restrictions, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), face parallel suppression, with the GFW increasingly deploying active probing to identify and VPN protocols, alongside legal mandates requiring service providers to and block unauthorized tools. This multi-layered approach ensures high efficacy in , where direct access attempts typically fail within seconds, though temporary lapses occur during GFW updates or overloads. Official rationales for these restrictions, as articulated in Chinese policy documents and , emphasize safeguarding , , and by excluding "harmful" foreign information that could incite unrest or disseminate falsehoods. In practice, the blocks target Wikipedia's decentralized, , which includes unfiltered coverage of events like the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident and criticisms of leadership—topics systematically omitted or reframed in domestic sources to align with state ideology. Authorities have cited Wikipedia's refusal to comply with content removal requests as justification, viewing the platform's resistance to editorial controls as a vector for ideological subversion and foreign influence, consistent with broader doctrines prioritizing "" over open information flows. This stance reflects a causal prioritization of regime stability, where unrestricted access is seen as risking collective action against official narratives, rather than mere technical or cultural concerns.

Workarounds and Global Access Patterns

Users in bypass the Great Firewall's restrictions on Chinese Wikipedia primarily through virtual private networks (VPNs), which encrypt and route it via servers outside the country. These tools, including free circumvention software like and , enable access to blocked sites despite government crackdowns on unauthorized VPN providers. VPN usage surged during events like the , correlating with heightened demand for uncensored information on platforms such as Wikipedia. Global access patterns for Chinese Wikipedia reflect its inaccessibility in mainland China, with the majority of page views originating from , , and overseas Chinese diaspora communities in the United States, , and . Following the 2015 block, traffic from mainland China plummeted, leaving residual views attributable to non-mainland Chinese speakers; pre-block analyses indicate mainland sources once comprised 30-40% of total views, underscoring the shift to unrestricted regions. consistently ranks as the top contributor to readership and edits, driven by its open environment and native use of Chinese languages. Overseas patterns show concentrated usage among populations, facilitated by unrestricted access, while circumvention in remains sporadic and risk-laden due to against VPNs. Empirical data from traffic analyses confirm minimal mainland penetration post-block, with global sustaining the platform's viability amid domestic alternatives.

Controversies and Conflicts

Internal Administrative Disputes

Internal administrative disputes within Chinese Wikipedia have centered on conflicts over control, administrator elections, and enforcement of neutrality policies, often pitting editors—frequently characterized as nationalist or aligned with state narratives—against contributors from , , and diaspora communities advocating for uncensored historical and political coverage. These tensions have manifested in coordinated during admin elections, where blocks of new accounts from mainland IP addresses have been used to sway votes against candidates perceived as insufficiently aligned with Beijing's viewpoints, as observed in a 2021 election extended due to suspected external mobilization. A prominent flashpoint occurred amid the 2019 Hong Kong protests, where edit wars erupted over articles on the extradition bill and related events; mainland-aligned editors sought to downplay protester demands and emphasize official PRC framing, while Hong Kong and Taiwanese users pushed for detailed accounts of police actions and democratic aspirations, leading to repeated reverts and administrative interventions to resolve disputes. Similar clashes have arisen on topics like Taiwan's sovereignty and the 1989 events, with accusations of systematic sanitization by one faction met by counter-claims of bias from the other. Escalation into and has further strained administration, including doxxing threats and verbal attacks against pro-democracy editors, prompting community motions for no-confidence in certain bureaucrats accused of enabling "collective ." These practices violated Wikipedia's policies on and , culminating in Wikimedia intervention on September 13, , when seven accounts were globally banned and administrative rights revoked from twelve others—predominantly active mainland contributors—for orchestrating threats, attacks, and election manipulations aimed at consolidating influence. The actions targeted a group suspected of prioritizing nationalist content over neutral editing, highlighting systemic challenges in maintaining impartial amid geopolitical divides.

State-Sponsored Editing Campaigns

In September 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation banned seven editors affiliated with the Wikimedians of Mainland China group and revoked administrative privileges from twelve others, citing evidence of coordinated manipulation to enforce pro-People's Republic of China (PRC) biases on zh.wikipedia.org. The banned users had engaged in off-wiki coordination, including threats and verbal attacks against dissenting editors, to suppress content critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), such as articles on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Uyghur internment camps, and Hong Kong pro-democracy movements. Wikimedia officials described these actions as an "infiltration" that undermined the encyclopedia's neutral point of view policy, with patterns of canvassing to influence administrator elections and revert edits challenging official PRC narratives. The incident highlighted broader suspicions of state involvement, as the editors' efforts mirrored PRC information control tactics, including aggressive promotion of the "one China" principle on Taiwan-related pages. Mainland Chinese users, operating under government restrictions that block Wikipedia domestically, reportedly used VPNs to access and edit, focusing on whitewashing CCP while deleting references to politically sensitive events. Although direct financial ties to the state were not publicly documented, the scale of coordination— involving systematic sourcing from state media like Xinhua and —aligned with China's known deployment of the "," state-paid commentators who astroturf online discourse to amplify official views. Earlier conflicts, such as 2019 edit wars over Taiwan's status, saw surges in edits from PRC IP addresses reclassifying the island as a rather than a separate entity, prompting Taiwanese editors to accuse of orchestrating campaigns. These efforts often exploited Wikipedia's volunteer-driven model, with pro-PRC actors gaining admin roles to patrol and revert changes, as evidenced by logs showing repeated blocks on critical revisions. Wikimedia's responses included enhanced scrutiny of Chinese-language projects, but challenges persist due to the difficulty in tracing VPN-obscured origins and the group's claims of organic rather than sponsorship. Such campaigns underscore tensions between open editing and authoritarian influence operations, with independent analyses noting over 200 fabricated or skewed historical articles inserted by similar actors.

Regional Editor Clashes and Bias Allegations

Regional editors on Chinese Wikipedia, particularly those from , , and , have engaged in frequent edit wars over politically sensitive topics, reflecting underlying geopolitical tensions. These conflicts often center on articles related to 's sovereignty, the 1989 events, and 's pro-democracy protests, where mainland-aligned editors have been accused of inserting narratives aligned with the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) official positions, such as rephrasing the protests as a "counter-revolutionary riot" or emphasizing as an inseparable part of . Taiwanese and editors, in response, have sought to restore descriptions based on international consensus or local perspectives, leading to prolonged disputes that sometimes violate Wikipedia's three-revert rule limiting rapid reverts. The Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC), a user group with a pro-Beijing orientation, has been at the forefront of these clashes, peaking during the 2019 Hong Kong protests when edit wars intensified on related pages. Investigations revealed coordinated efforts by some mainland editors to promote CCP-favorable content, including threats to report Hong Kong users under national security laws, prompting allegations of state-sponsored manipulation rather than neutral editing. In September 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation banned seven editors affiliated with mainland groups and stripped administrator privileges from twelve others, citing evidence of "infiltration" aimed at biasing articles through undisclosed coordination and suppression of dissenting views. Bias allegations extend bidirectionally: pro-Beijing editors and the WMC have claimed that the bans represent suppression by Wikimedia, potentially tilting Chinese Wikipedia toward Taiwanese or Western perspectives, while critics argue the actions addressed verifiable disruptions rather than political suppression. For instance, investigations uncovered "edit wars" on topics where pro-Beijing accounts systematically overwrote pro-democracy content, supported by off-wiki coordination that violated Wikipedia's policies on paid or advocacy editing. These incidents highlight broader challenges in maintaining neutrality on Chinese Wikipedia, where regional editors' incentives—shaped by differing legal environments and access to uncensored information—often prioritize ideological alignment over encyclopedic standards. Mainland editors, operating under CCP censorship, have faced accusations of importing state narratives, whereas Taiwan-based contributors emphasize verifiable sources from global media, though both sides have been critiqued for selective sourcing.

Enforcement Actions Against Manipulators

In September 2021, the (WMF) conducted a major enforcement operation on Chinese Wikipedia, globally banning seven accounts linked to editors for suspected infiltration and manipulation of community processes. The bans, executed at 16:13 UTC on , targeted users accused of coordinating to recruit members, control voting outcomes, and skew article content toward hard-line Chinese nationalist positions, including suppression of criticism of the Chinese government. This action followed investigations revealing patterns of organized editing that violated Wikipedia's policies on , sockpuppetry, and paid advocacy, with evidence from edit histories, user communications, and CheckUser data indicating efforts to dominate administrative elections and revert neutral content on sensitive topics like protests and . Complementing the account bans, the WMF revoked sysop (administrator) privileges from twelve additional pro-China users on Chinese Wikipedia, who had allegedly used their elevated access to enforce biased revisions and block dissenting editors. These demotions aimed to restore community balance, as the affected admins had reportedly prioritized ideological alignment over neutral point of view (NPOV) standards, such as protecting articles from factual updates on issues. The operation disrupted a purported network tied to the Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC) user group, which had grown rapidly through targeted recruitment, raising alarms about external influence potentially from state actors seeking to propagate official narratives. Local administrators on Chinese Wikipedia routinely enforce against lower-level manipulation, including IP-based from —often reverted within minutes via patrol tools—and short-term blocks for disruptive edits, with over 1,000 such interventions logged annually in recent years per reports. However, the WMF actions marked an escalation beyond standard admin tools like temporary blocks or page protections, invoking global oversight due to the scale of coordination, which threatened the project's core reliability. Pro-Beijing editors contested the measures as "well-calculated suppression," claiming insufficient evidence and in WMF decisions, though independent analyses affirmed the bans' basis in verifiable edit patterns and off-wiki coordination. Post-2021, enforcement has emphasized proactive monitoring, with increased use of abuse filters to flag coordinated reversions on politically charged articles and warnings issued to over 20 additional accounts in follow-up probes. These measures have stabilized editor demographics, reducing mainland China's share of from a peak of around 20% to under 10%, as non-mainland contributors from and regained influence. While routine vandalism persists—often from anonymized proxies—major manipulator campaigns have waned, underscoring Wikipedia's decentralized yet intervention-capable structure in countering attempts.

Alternatives and Broader Impact

Domestic Competitors in China

, launched by Inc. in 2006, serves as the leading domestic alternative to within , functioning as a collaborative that requires verified user accounts for contributions to ensure compliance with regulatory standards. It has amassed a vast repository of entries, reportedly exceeding 22 million by 2021, far surpassing the Chinese Wikipedia's scale due to unrestricted domestic access and integration with Baidu's search ecosystem. Unlike 's neutral point of view , entries often reflect official narratives, with content on politically sensitive topics either omitted or aligned with state-approved perspectives to adhere to mandates. Hudong Baike, originally established in 2005 and later rebranded as Baike.com under ownership following a investment, emerged as a key rival, boasting at least 18 million articles by 2021 and emphasizing within similar oversight frameworks. This platform, akin to , prioritizes comprehensive coverage of Chinese-centric topics but subjects edits to moderation, resulting in systematic exclusions of dissenting views on events like the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, as identified through comparative analyses with uncensored sources. 's involvement has intensified competition, leveraging its social media infrastructure to boost visibility and user engagement. In parallel, the Chinese government has developed state-sponsored alternatives, such as the online edition of the Chinese Encyclopedia announced in , which draws from the authoritative printed volumes edited by selected scholars and institutions rather than open contributions. This non-collaborative resource, intended as a "digital book of everything" with uniquely Chinese framing, enforces strict expert vetting to maintain ideological consistency, bypassing public input to prioritize reliability as defined by official criteria. These platforms collectively dominate information access in , where Wikipedia's since 2019 has funneled users toward censored domestic options that amplify government-aligned content while suppressing unverified or oppositional material.

Role in Disseminating Unfiltered Knowledge

The Chinese Wikipedia serves as a primary platform for Chinese-language speakers to access information on politically sensitive topics that are systematically censored within , such as the 1989 protests and the suppression of . Its neutral point of view policy enables coverage of these events with multiple perspectives, contrasting sharply with domestic alternatives like , which omit or align content with directives. A 2013 analysis by the matched over 5,000 Chinese Wikipedia articles with equivalents on and Hudong Baike, identifying "content gaps" in approximately 15% of cases, particularly on historical events, issues, and leadership critiques, where Chinese platforms enforced to avoid regulatory penalties. This disparity underscores the Chinese Wikipedia's function as an uncensored archive, maintained by a global editor base predominantly from , , and the diaspora, who contribute to articles exceeding 1.5 million in number as of recent counts. Primarily accessed in —where it ranks as the most popular Wikipedia edition—and among communities, the platform disseminates knowledge free from mainland interference, with page views reflecting heavy usage in these regions. In , the site's complete blockage since April 2019 limits direct access, yet VPN circumvention enables dissidents and researchers to encounter alternative narratives, as evidenced by editing battles over events like the 2019 Hong Kong protests, where pro-democracy contributors clashed with state-aligned editors. Academic studies leveraging the expansion of the block as a demonstrate that such restrictions reduce incidental exposure to uncensored information, reinforcing the platform's value for those bypassing barriers to inform public discourse and preserve historical records against erasure. While internal disputes occasionally introduce biases, the decentralized process generally resists unified state control, distinguishing it from centralized Chinese encyclopedias prone to commercial and political distortions.

References

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  22. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Cross-lingual_article_quality_assessment
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